3rd Grade Curriculum: 2025-2026
If you’ve been around here for a while you’ll know my upcoming 3rd grader loves all things math, engineering, and drawing so I’ve got a few new things for him to try this year and I hope he likes it. If not, don’t worry, I’ve got back up plans!
Morning Time + Devotional
This year our family morning time will be from 9:00-10:00. Here are the things we’ll be working on and looping through during this time:
The Red Headed Hostess Scripture Study: This is one of my longest running subscriptions and I’ve been using it as part of our morning time for years now. I usually pick one thing a day to bring into our morning time so that we’re always starting our day off on a spiritual note.
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization: We have not had much of a focus on poetry memorization and I decided I wanted to try it this year. We will just work on this a couple times a week.
Journaling: I got one of these Question A Day Journals for each of my younger boys and I think they’re going to love it!
Music Appreciation: I am so excited for this course. We will probably just do 1-2 lessons a week family style. We’ll be watching the videos and just discussing the question prompts out of the student guidebook.
Health & Safety & A Little Spot of Emotion Books: After we work through our Music Appreciation course we are going to spend the rest of the year touching on health & safety topics. I just want to keep this area really simple. I am going to be utilizing all of the health & safety courses from TGTB, but we will not be doing any of the science journals or extensive hands-on activities or science projects with them. I am simply just going to use them as a spine and do mini discussion lessons with the kids. I will also likely skip or combine multiple age-appropriate lessons. For my younger boys I grabbed these cute emotional intelligence books that I think will be so great to use.
Language Arts
Handwriting: TGTB Handwriting 3: This year my son is learning cursive and I absolutely LOVE the way cursive is taught in these books. If you want to see more on this topic you might like this post: Learning to Write, Type, & Draw.
Typing: Typing Club: I used this resource to teach typing with my older girls and it worked great.
Reading: Savvy Learning: This resources offers live small group daily reading lessons. My son has been doing these since January and we’re going to keep him going with these through our next school year. If you also decide to try Savvy classes, I do have a referral code: 1UA8WO. It’ll give you a $25 discount when you enroll.
Extra Phonics Practice: Explode the Code 5 & TGTB Level 3 Readers: My kids usually do 1-2 pages out of the ETC workbooks a day independently just for a little extra phonics practice. I have a full review on the Explode the Code books which you can read here. And since we have a full reading program through Savvy I just decided to use TGTB leveled readers to help practice fluency with my son. We’ll read from these books and books from their bookshop everyday.
Grammar: Fix It! L1: We used this with my older girls and I love how simple it is to teach basic grammar concepts. My son will just independently do 2-3 pages of this a week.
Spelling: Evan Moore 3: Beginning in 1st grade I use these Evan Moor books with my kids. They do one page a day independently and then we do a spelling test at the end of the week.
Writing: Bravewriter Partnership Writing & Darts: Since most of the above things can be done independently and won’t take long this year I am going to be teaching writing family-style with my two younger boys using the Bravewriter resources kind of eclectically. A few years ago we all did a few writing projects out of their Jot It Down program and really enjoyed it but there is still a lot in there we haven’t done. So, this year I’ll pull one idea a month out of one of these two guides: Partnership Writing or Jot It Down —you should know both are very easy to adapt projects for younger/older kids.
Then, with my older son I am going to start off the year with the Wildelore literature study and see how he likes it. FYI I am not a fan of how any of the Bravewriter literature guides are organized. But, I am learning that my son learns very differently than my older girls so I knew needed to try something new with him and thought this might do the trick. Since all of this will be new to him I just wanted to try one guide though and see how he does with it. If he loves it we’ll continue to use these and add more guides through out the year. If not, then I’ll figure it out down the road and we’ll shift gears once we’re settled into a rhythm.
Math
Beast Academy Online Interactive Program: I feel like we are either going to totally love this option or completely regret it! We tried BA online with my son two years ago, but he was only 6 and really struggled with the online platform because he couldn’t read and the audio would read too quickly for him. But, when I explained the math to him he did really well and thrived with this style of learning. He sees math very differently than I do and he is naturally math minded so I am trying to think outside MY box for him here. We trialed a little bit this summer and he did not like the comic book style (which I was happy about because neither do I), but he seemed to do well with the online video lessons. I bought the first of four level 3 practice books to have on hand but I’m not sure if we’ll even end up using it. I love the idea that it’s all online, but it makes me nervous I won’t stay on top of it and he’ll learn how to work the system and not really be progressing so I will spend a few weeks at the beginning of the school year observing him and making sure I feel like it will for sure be a good fit.
If BA doesn’t work out my back-up plan is to see how we like Saxon with my older girls and if we do I’ll probably end up switching him to that and either teaching him or using the videos in My Math Assistant. Stay tuned!
History & Geography
TGTB History Year 1: I will be teaching this course family style and my son will be using the 3-6 Student Explorer. There are 4 units in this course with about 15-20 lessons. I will teach from this course 3x a week in a 4-6 week unit style study. After the first unit we will transition to a science unit study for 4-6 weeks and then transition back to the second unit in this history course and so on and so forth throughout the rest of the school year.
Science
Harbor & Sprout Engineering: I think my son is going to LOVE this course. We will be doing it family-style and I am hoping his older sisters will be able to help me with the lessons. I will teach from the course 3x times a week in a 4-6 week unit style study. After this study we will transition back to history for another 4-6 weeks and so on and so forth throughout the rest of the school year.
Crunch Labs: My son is going on year 3 of his Crunch Labs subscription and it’s something he really looks forward to each month so we’re just going to keep on going.
In addition to the Health & Safety materials I mentioned above, this science plan should get us up through December of 2025 and then I will see where we’re at before I add anymore here.
Art & PE
Art: Sparklers Club Epic Curriculum: This year I am going to be teaching a more formal art class family-style 1x a week (on the day we are not doing history or science.) The Sparklers Club is a yearly subscription that only opens in August and January. Inside, are hundreds of art tutorials for K-7th graders that can be unlocked with monthly credits (it’s kind of like Audible-style). There are also five full-year curriculums to chose from. Epic is one that we have fully unlocked because of the year we joined and it is a study of art elements and principles. Each month we will study an element of art (line, color, value, shape, pattern, ect.) and then do 1-2 art projects associated with that element.
Learn to Draw in 21 Days Season 1: My son LOVES to draw. He trialed the first video sample of this course and loved it so I’ll have this on hand for him to work through once at least once week in the morning during his independent work time.
PE: We have a family recreational center pass so the kids are regularly swimming. Our family also enjoys small hikes and biking. My son also does a bi-weekly fitness class at our local gym and enrolls in various city sports through out the year.
That’s a wrap! Next, I’ll be sharing our 1st graders curriculum picks so stay tuned!
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